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Wednesday, August 3, 2016

Fractions - Build an Ocean Scene Math Activity

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This is a recreational blog. Although I've done my best to ensure the safety of each activity, clarity of directions, and accuracy of my educational activities; I can in NO way be held liable for your personal use of my material. Please use common sense.

If you are planning a trip to the ocean this summer, or your kids love the movies Finding Nemo and Finding Dory, they will love creating this cute ocean scene of their own! You could use this activity to go along with a unit on sea creatures, or simply as a fun way to practice writing fractions, decimals and percents. Either way, it's simple and low prep practice for your kids.

The great thing about this activity is that it can be easily adapted for different ages and abilities, and used again and again so that the answers will be different each time.

Fractions

Ocean Scene Math Activity

First, print an ocean mat and recording page for each child and one instruction page. Then print and cutout the ocean animal cards.

I would suggest printing the ocean mats and animal cards on card stock and then using a laminator so this can be used over and over. You could, however, use it as a cut and paste activity if you're only using it once.

Once the materials are ready, it's time to create an ocean scene full of fun creatures.

To add an animal, roll a die and add the corresponding animal to your ocean.

For instance, if you roll a 1, you would add a blue fish.

Each child rolls the die ten times to add ten animals and fill their ocean scene.

Once the scene is complete, your child can fill in the chart with the total number of each animal, and write the fraction, decimal and percent of that type of animal compared to the total animals in the sea.

Variations of the Ocean Fractions Activity:

If you'd like to use this as an introduction using fractions, decimals and percents out of 100, multiply each animal total by ten before converting to fractions, decimals and percents. That way, the total animal count will be 100.

To make this more challenging, increase the number of rolls to a more difficult number such as 15 or 18 (or whatever you'd like). Then have the kids write the number of each animal as a fraction, decimal and percent.

You may also want to use this as an opportunity to practice reducing fractions to their simplest form.

Bethany is the mom behind the blog, Math Geek Mama, a website dedicated to making math fun and engaging, while building a strong conceptual understanding of mathematics. When she's not playing with numbers, she is exploring with her four little ones, drinking way too much coffee, or soaking up the chaos of everyday life. Follow along on Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, and Twitter.